Need help please!

god and zilla living in a tank for about 6 months and everything seemed to be going ok, they have a few snails as tank mates and have been fed on frozen blood worms and earthworms and had healthy appetites.

Recently I noticed they have both been lifting their back legs off of the ground when not moving but otherwise seemed fine so I paid little notice.

Today I found one of them dead floating on the surface and I hate to say it because I feel so responsible but the remaining one seems to be very skinny and frail looking, I don't think I've paid enough attention until now to realize.

One of his front legs looks very very thin and withered and one of his back legs seems to be off of the ground and neither limbs seem to be working very well.

I feel so terrible because I honestly didnt observe any immediate problems but today I can see how frail and ill he looks. his tail is bent too which im told is a sign of stress.

They seemed to be eating healthily the last time i fed them but he looks much more tiny than i remember

Does anyone have any idea what might be wrong or what I can do to try and save him?

The tank is small and has a filter and i change 50% water weekly.

I also noticed a lot of the snails were dead recently and assumed they had just been munched on so i removed the corpses but now im wondering if something went wrong with the water and they reacted to it?

They were trumpet snails, i think they are all dead now and all that's left are a few common pond snails.

The water seems to be ok and the filter is working.

I'm not sure what to do, any ideas?

I feel terrible

Just to update I have just given him some frozen bloodworm and he is gulping away at it.

He seems to have a much harder time moving around compared to normal, although he made for the food fast enough i can see his movements don't seem as precise or confident if that makes sense?

he doesn't seem very sure footed

when i got fraggle he had tiny little legs that barely supported him. once he came home his legs got bigger when he had more space to move around though they are still small for his body size (he is very lazy) but about 2-3 weeks ago i noticed he was getting sick and while it could have been a couple of things making him ill i decided to move up my plan to buy him a new tank by a bit. after a couple of days in the new bigger tank his gill colour has improved and he is a little more active. while he was ill i did water changes daily and i suggest you do that.

maybe there is something wrong with the substrate? might be an idea to get him out of the tank into a tempory home. maybe a big food storage box and keep him as cold as possible.

also what colour gills does he have as thats how i know if fraggle is doing ok.

good luck

They seem to be a dark brownish colour and they have always been that colour although they don't look as fluffy and big as they used to be.

Having said that even when we got them the gills seemed much smaller than those i see in pictures.

I may remove the substrate altogether as im told small gravel is not good for them and aslo as there were a lot of snail deaths there may possibly be bits of decaying snail alough i did do a thorough clean up job when i noticed they had died.

He seems terrible small compared to other ones i see, even before he got ill he and the other one looked very anorexic.

How often should they be fed?

Some people tell me every day and some tell me every week so at the moment i have been feeding them twice a week.

they have always had a healthy appetite but there is usually more food than they can eat (i add a couple of earth worms or 1 block of frozen bloodworm, maybe more frequently but less each time would be better?

I think young axolotls are supposed to be fed every day, and every two days when they are older. It sounds like it would be a good idea to feed your axolotl as often as he will eat, to get him back up to a healthy weight. I would advise putting plenty of food in the tank, but make sure you clean any leftovers up to avoid problems with water quality. I took the advice of lots of people on this forum and bought a turkey baster for cleaning - don't know how I ever managed without it now!

How strong is your filter? If he's in a small tank with a strong filter, that could be stressing him out - I've read that a curled tail can be a sign of stress from too much water flow.

I'd maybe suggest putting him in the fridge to speed up his recovery, although I know they don't eat when they're very cold. What does anyone else think?

I agree with Kerry and Shelly's advice. Check your fridge temperature using a thermometer in a glass/cup of water. Place in fridge and check in about 20minutes. If above 4C then its ok for him to go in fridge.

If you don't feel comfortable putting him in the fridge. As long as your room temperature is lower than 20-24C, then you can keep him in a separate bucket/container of dechlorinated water and change majority of it daily and feed regularly/daily till he improves. You can then sort out your problem with your tank.

Also, advise you on testing your tankwater for ammonia, nitrite and nitrates. Take a sample of tankwater into your local petshop and ask them to test it for the things I mentioned, get them to write the results down. Don't buy anything to "fix" your water if they suggest it.

How big is your tank (sorry measurements length, width/depth & height, as I'm terrible at litre conversion?

Remove gravel completely, you may also find a lot of gunk/waste beneath which could be adding to your water problem. You can have bare tank floor (which is excellent for feeding and cleaning - makes things so much easier to clean up uneaten food/waste.

Do you thaw your frozen bloodworm cube, give it a quick rinse with dechlorinated water before feeding to your axie. If you just throw the cube in, any bits that thaw will add to waste in your tank.

When you do the waterchanges, try and do no more than 30% weekly.

If you have ammonia or nitrite readings above 0, then frequent partial waterchanges - 20-30% daily is better than doing 50% once a week. This will bring down any high levels and keep the water relatively safe for your axie to reside in.

i used to feed Fraggle daily when i first got him. their bellies are meant to be the same width as their heads so i would offer him as much food as he will take. try some lamb or ox liver cut into pieces about the size of your little finger nail. Fraggle would take about 3 of these over a 30 min period and the first time he then wouldnt eat for a week as i think his stomach was just to full. now his stomach has stretched and he can eat a lot more. i did notice that when i did give him liver he seemed to grow more. usually i feed him live or frozen bloodworm every day or every other day depending on how piggy he has been and with liver once or twice a week.

is he a wild type?

If you're using raw meat it's better to cut away all fat and tendons then cut it into wormlike strips rather than nail sized chunks; as their mouth/teeth are designed for grabbing worms.

really? when i give him worm sized peices they go in and out a few times and then are spat out. he finds it to much effort i think. im really not kidding when i say he is lazy. most of the time when i hand feed him he doesnt even open his mouth fully. just enough to get the food in and sometimes doesnt even create enough suction to swallow. he then spits it out and just waits for me to pick it up and try again.

ok i'm going to try putting him in a bucket while i de-gravel the tank.

Are there any popular fish remedies that i could use that wouldn't be harmful like melafix maybe?

His belly/body is waaaaay skinnier than his head

The guy said when we bought them that they only needed to be fed once or twice a week but i will try feeding him daily and see how it goes

You can feed him daily while he is sick, then you should only feed every third day.

i wouldnt bother with melafix, sounds like he just needs the gravel taken out and to be fed up a bit if hes skinny, as kapo suggested try to get your water tested as normally that will tell you whats going on

As long as you do the daily waterchanges and feed him , see how he goes. You may very well not need to add medicine. He probably looks pretty bad cos you weren't taking much notice of things around them.


shelly - they usually spit the worm out if it's too long or fat; which is why a lot of people chop up long worms to make it easier to digest (think of trying to swallow a long piece of spaghetti pasta that we couldn't use our teeth to cut, it'd be difficult!). My worms are chopped to about 1/2-1inch; sometimes smaller if they spit them. Otherwise they love the live bloodworm, or baby earthworms which are skinny. That's what I meant by wormlike - skinny cuts. I tend to feed the baby worms lately more than our breeding worms, so we don't run out!

dont think i could handle the chopping...karma and all

I hated chopping my garden worms too, but can now handle/chop them if needed, its all for a good cause! I handle bugs/slugs/mozzy larvae/live bloodworm/earthworms/etc... something I used to cringe at before ever owning axies - but all for the good of feeding our axies!

I prefer handfeeding, hubby prefers using skewer, either way we find we have to wiggle the food and move it away and make them work for their food, otherwise they will do same and sit waiting for it to fall into their mouths!

ok he's still in the bucket, one of his front legs is so teeny i get the impression he might have lost it and that he's growing a new one....

Still very skinny but his belly is looking bigger and he still has an appetite so im staying optimistic

Cleaned the gravel from the tank and removed most of the snails too, just a couple left now, did a complete water change and will leave it be while the axy gets better.

It only has a tiny filter but it does make quite a lot of water movement so i may try and make up a diffuser or spray bar with some tubing and ingenuity.

Can anyone suggest foods other than bloodworm and earthworms to get some variety into his diet?

Also are there any specific foods that would help get his body mass up faster?

Beef heart is good also wax worms but you ned to cut the heads off. These both should be used a treat not a staple diet they are fatty.